What They Say….

I Would like to take this opportunity, On behalf of myself and the Residents of North Las Vegas Care center to express our appreciation and gratitude to you and wonderful volunteers of triple5teens nonprofit organization for their recent gardening project.

We appreciate and love that your organization volunteers put aside their own time, to make our Residents feel loved and cared for.

There is really no kinder act that helping those less fortunate than yourself. We at North Las Vegas Care Center thank you valued contribution.
We look forward to your continued support.

Sincerely,

Teresa Aguilar
Activities Director

Las Vegas family gets heat, help, and hope

by Jeff Gillan

Thursday, December 22nd 2016

The Stephenson family receives an early Christmas present thanks to Goettl AC and The Sunny Plumber. (Jeff Gillan/KSNV)

LAS VEGAS (KSNV News3LV) — This home has seen better days and this family has had better years.

“It’s just stuff we can’t afford to pay right now. So we’re just doing the best we can to take care of our kids,” mom Abana Stephenson tells me as she gives me a tour of her kitchen, with a broken window, and an oven with a busted handle.

Those are the least of the problems at the Las Vegas house off Rainbow, they’ve called home for about 15 years. The toilet’s busted. The AC and heat don’t work upstairs.

“At least ten years these kids have been coming down right in this room where we’re at and sleeping to either stay cool in the summertime or to get warm in the wintertime,” Stephenson told me as we sat in the living room, with Grandma on the couch, along with daughters Sarah, 16, and Zipporah, 15.

Abdana Stephenson, sitting. Her family received a great gift today.

The home is worn and weathered. The rooftop heating/AC unit was installed when Elvis was popular.

“Well, the machine was manufactured in 1969, which makes it 47 years old,” said Michael Gamst, Manager at Goettl Air Conditioning.

Gamst may look like an AC guy, but on Thursday, he and his fellow workers at Goettl Air and Sunny Plumbing, Santa. They got a tip this family needed some help, and they swung into action.

“When the employees started pulling money out of their own pockets and getting gift cards and just going above and beyond, it just warmed the hearts of everybody,” he told me.

So that new unit for the roof, the new toilet for the house…all worth, “well over ten thousand dollars,” Gamst tells me, today, all free.

“It makes me have faith in people again that there is good caring people out there,” Abana Stephenson tells me. Next to her is her Christmas tree, with wrapped gifts on the floor, many donated by Gamst’s fellow co-workers and the non-profit Triple5teens.

For Stephenson’s, It’s been a tough past few years. She was raped about six-years-ago, leaving her with post-traumatic stress. She escaped her attacker but the scars linger.

“It was a brutal rape. There were beatings. I was handcuffed to a bed for hours,” she says.

Life, after that, threw other roadblocks.

“Just financial problem after financial problem,” said Stephenson.

Money was very, very tight, and contractors they hired to fix things, fled.

“We gave money for someone to do the landscaping and that didn’t get finished, and we paid someone to fix what they’re doing right now. Lasted six months and broke,” she says.